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An anonymous reader writes "From The Independent: The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.
For the full story, see this article."

Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, biblical?
Ray: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor... real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies.
Venkman: Rivers and seas boiling!
Egon: 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos.
Winston:The dead rising from the grave!
Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together... mass hysteria!

In January 1961, on a snowy and unusually cold day in New York City, J. Murray Mitchell, Jr. of the U.S. Weather Bureau's Office of Climatology told a meeting of meteorologists that the world's temperature was falling.

[...]Around 1980 two groups undertook to work through the numbers in all their grubby details, rejecting sets of uncertain data and tidying up the rest.
One group was in New York, funded by NASA and led by James Hansen. They understood that the work by Mitchell and others mainly described the Northern Hemisphere, since that was where the great majority of reliable observations lay. Sorting through the more limited temperature observations from the other half of the world, they got reasonable averages by applying the same mathematical methods that they had used to get average numbers in their computer models of climate. (After all, Hansen remarked, when he studied other planets he might judge the entire planet by the single station where a probe had landed.) In 1981, the group reported that "the common misconception that the world is cooling is based on Northern Hemisphere experience to 1970." Just around the time that meteorologists had noticed the cooling trend, such as it was, it had apparently reversed. From a low point in the mid 1960s, by 1980 the world had warmed some 0.2C.

Hansen's group looked into the causes of the fluctuations, and they got a rather good match for the temperature record using volcanic eruptions plus solar variations. Greenhouse warming by CO2 had not been a major factor (at least, not yet). More sophisticated analyses in the 1990s would eventually confirm these findings. From the 1940s to the early 1960s, the Northern Hemisphere had indeed cooled while temperatures had held roughly steady in the south. This was largely because of normal variations in natural forces, although industrial aerosol pollution had helped. Then the warming had resumed in both hemispheres.

The temporary northern cooling had been bad luck for climate science. By feeding skepticism about the greenhouse effect, while provoking some scientists and many journalists to speculate publicly about the coming of a new ice age, the cool spell gave the field a reputation for fecklessness that it would not soon live down.

Any greenhouse warming had been masked by chance fluctuations in solar activity, by pulses of volcanic aerosols, and by increased haze from pollution. Furthermore, as a few scientists pointed out, the upper layer of the oceans must have been absorbing heat. These effects could only delay atmospheric warming by a few decades. Hansen's group boldly predicted that considering how fast CO2 was accumulating, by the end of the 20th century "carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climatic variability." Around the same time, a few other scientists using different calculations came to the same conclusion -- the warming would show itself clearly sometime around 2000.

In January 1961, on a snowy and unusually cold day in New York City, J. Murray Mitchell, Jr. of the U.S. Weather Bureau's Office of Climatology told a meeting of meteorologists that the world's temperature was falling.

The way you can tell that this is a political piece, rather than a scientific one, is the lack of mention of nuclear power. They want countries to commit to generating 25% of their power through "renewable means." Why? Why not just "non global warming" means?

People talk a lot, but look at what is really happening in the world - not what people are talking about. Nuclear power is unpopular, but we still use it for 20% of the US electric power generation [doe.gov] - we just do it quietly.

This is obviously an environmentalist editorial - nuclear power is a much better answer, and probably is better for the environment too. (Studies have shown that wind mills and solar cells cause climat shifts too!)

One of the key culprits in global warming is the increased use of large, fuel inefficient vehicles - like the Hummer whose fuel efficiency is best measured in gallons per mile.

If we (mostly North Americans) could end our love affair with huge, wasteful vehicles that more often than not are driven by only one person at a time, perhaps we wouldn't be in this situation now.

I for one make extensive use of public transportation, and the cars we own are small and fuel efficient. When our family grows to the size where we need a larger vehicle, it won't be an SUV, becuase we *never* go offroading, and frankly, a minivan gets better mileage.

But I'll still take public transport whenever possible.

In short, the parent comment is *not* funny. It's symbolic of the larger problem. I found it depressing.

You'd better have a whole load of printers and computers to carry, and they have better be carried often or far, because a subcompact can carry all but the largest computers and printers. Everything consumer can easily be fit in the back seat of any car, no matter how small. Most consumer goods will also fit into the trunk.

If you move the stuff a short distance and not all the frequently, you can always make a few trips.

If you really have that much stuff to cart around, maybe a van would be a better vehic

Well, it annoys me that you get to choose the temperature and CO2 levels on my property.

If you can get a zero-emissions SUV (or one that only releases harmless gasses like H20 or CO2 in a closed cycle like with biofuels), then it wouldn't be any of my business, but that SUV pollutes and effects me, so it is my business.

It's also my business what other countries do, since their pollution does effect me.

And that's the problem. The government should not be using force to dictate what kinds of cars people drive.

So the government should mind its own business because a few irresponsible people value their egos over the environment? This is EXACTLY what the government should be doing; intervening for the benefit of the vast majority of people in the country (and world, for that matter).

The possibility of changes to the world's ocean currents is a very real possibility, and could have catastrophic consequences. However, they are not irreversable. I have read reports citing the fact that these currents have cycles, where every 10 or 20 thousand years they shut off, only to restart a century or two later. Yes, that would be catastrophic to us, but not to the planet. Hell, it survived a fiery birth, multiple major meteor impacts, magnetic pole reversals, caldera supervolanoes, et al. and the planet is still around. We might not be around later, but good ol' Earth sure will be.

Does anyone have a link to the actual report? This article just sounds like more scare mongering and dumbing down. As always, the devil is in the details, I want to see the details.

You just touched on the colossal, huge, central point that virtually every dimisser of global warming fails to "get." It's not that the world won't survive. Life on earth has survived, and thrived, at higher global temperatures than we have now. It's just that, when major transitions occur, the dominant forms of life do not remain dominant. And that would mean us.

This ain't about hugging spotted owls. It's not about whether Sandhill cranes have a place to roost on their way north in the spring. The debate's about our survival. When we read:

...could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as "runaway" global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream.

Those are serious risks. Any *one* of those would stand a considerable risk of destabilizing the world as we know it. Imagine a Pakistan, armed with nuclear weapons as it is, whose politics were affected by a massive drought. That's the easiest thing to predict in the world; climate change precipitated the Mfcane, which set loose a huge migration of people in southern Africa, which in turn had a lot to do with the military dictatorship of Shaka Zulu. Governments, in a state of global climate change, would be made drastically unstable.

The risk of nuclear war, during the cold war, was not a certainty -- it was a risk. We spent untold resources to address that risk, on both sides. The question is, how much do we commit to addressing this one? When an overwhelming majority of scientific opinion is playing the role of Cassandra, how seriously do you take the possible tragedy?

You just touched on the colossal, huge, central point that virtually every dimisser of global warming fails to "get." It's not that the world won't survive. Life on earth has survived, and thrived, at higher global temperatures than we have now. It's just that, when major transitions occur, the dominant forms of life do not remain dominant. And that would mean us.

I'd wager to bet that most of the "dismissers" you mention are well aware of these facts. Scientifically literate people can see what's going on and visualize the possible long-term consequences, but it's going to take more than public opinion polls and stock-market prediction techniques to understand the process well enough for longer-term predictions. Cassandra is being listened to, just with a grain of salt.

It's just that, when major transitions occur, the dominant forms of life do not remain dominant. And that would mean us.

Don't count on the cockraoches taking over just yet. Humans would not be wiped off the face of the Earth, it's just that a lot of us would die. The ones who depend on technology, commerce and "artificial" food/water distribution would be hardest hit. It just so happens that those are the ones responsible for a disproportiately high share of the warming problem.

Perhaps in round one when there is something sieze. but prolonged agricultural displacement does not favor such tactics.

It favors survivors that can live off the land in ways that simply cannot sustain a large concentrated populations.

If you kill the high yield crop centers you kill modern civilization.

Odds are in the event of a true shift you would see a mad scramble to move agricultural production capacity to where the new sweetspots for agriculture occured due to new weather patterns. Additionally you

Except that we have enough time, before the death of the Sun, to travel the interstellar distances to any of a million? or billions? of stars that have planets we could support human life with...

The perspective of that much time is vastly different then looking at the prospect of starving to death within our lifetime for no other reason then the human race failing to at least attempt to control the change of our climate. The survival of the human race should be important to us.

We have the technology available to create large carbon dioxide scrubbers, they aren't cheap, but they are possible. We have the technology to decrease the absorbtion of heat in major cities which would decrease the impact major cities has on weather systems.

Almost everything we need to lessen our impact and the impact of Nature on the global climate is at our fingertips. There is no reason for humanity to be so apathetic and downright stupid about our own ongoing survival.

It's not about giving things up, it's about changing the means we reach our ways and fixing the problems we do cause. This is about owning our own existence and future survival. This is about owning up to our past mistakes, even though we knew not what we were doing. Now that we know what to do, we just need to do it and stop acting like the stupid s--ts we collectively act like.

I take it you haven't really looked into this at all.
First off no ftl is needed, and even were it needed we know general relativity is neigther complete, nor totaly prohibitive of 'ftl' travel.
We also do NOT need to strip mine every ounce of metal, or even close, to make high volume colony ships.
A simple way to do it is to find a fair sized asteroid (say.5 miles by about 2) and drill a nice long hole in the center. Then you pump in a few thousand gallons of water and seal the hole up. Next you use a fairly large mirror (which in zero g can be very lightweight) to focu light down on the long axis of your asteroid, which should be spinning along said axis.
What happens next is the asteroid heats up till the rock softens. As this happens the water turns to steam from the same heat and applies presure to the inside of the rock. Done right you 'inflate' the asteroid into a hollow shell a couple miles across and several long.
This becomes the basis for your space craft.now travel times might seem like an issue, but with ion drives and solar sails, and perhaps bussard ram-jets for engines you get up to a sizeable percentage c. At these speeds time dialation can turn a 400 year trip into a 4-10 month trip for the occupants.
Now admittedly this won't hold 6+ billion people , but it could hold several hundred, many thousands if we find a way to make long term hibernation work (not as far fetched as it sounds). However quite a few of these could be built (and you wouldn't want just one big one any way) and we could send off a few billion colonist this way.
The amazing thing is we can see how to do all of this, at our current level of tech this would take a huge world wide effort, but it's not impossible and with the advancement of technology this could eventually be reduce to feasability equivilant to another moon landing.
And this isn't the only way to do this sort of thing that doesn't involve going beyond what we are almost certain to be eventually possible.

"Let's say that Pakistan and India go to war, and it escalates to nuclear war. Each side is estimated to have roughly 70 small fission weapons. Even if all of these weapons were assembled, delivered and detonated, the global environmental effects would be minimal. A substantial number of Indians and Pakistanis would be killed or injured, and the political and economic consequences would probably be severe for the region..."

Hmm...well, it would certainly slow the outsourcing of jobs to India, that's for su

70 nuclear explosions throws a tremendous amount of irradiated dust into the atmosphere, and each renders several square miles of land uninhabitable. Period. Several thousand square miles of land would be contaminated by nuclear fallout. All this in one of the most densly populated parts of the world.

Particularly the section on delayed effects. Life would suck for most of Asia. You would see a world war break out simply from the billions of people living on contaminated land looking at Australia, Africa, and Europe for arable land.

Fallout levels depend on whether they are ground or air bursts, and weather patterns. Fallout radiation levels decay quickly. Very little land would be uninhabitable for long periods of time. Contamination is relative. People can live and farm on land that is heavily contaminated by modern radiation safety standards without immediate and severe health problems. Human populations are surprisingly resilient when exposed to non-fatal levels of radiation. If you survive the first 60

Why not look a little closer to home? 2000 nuclear weapons were detonated over a period of about 40 years by the United States government. About 500 were above ground tests. That averages one test every two weeks with one above ground every two months for a period of four decades.

So really, we are talking about 0.02% of the (usable) Earth's surface. My point is that it just so happens to be the 0.02% where more than 1 billion (and counting) people live, in the neighborhood of another country (China) that is in the path of the fallout with another 1 billion (and counting) people.

Count yourselves lucky for the expensive petrol. I'm sure that the price keeps usage down, meaning that you have more to export. The taxes also help pay for what is some of the best, if not the best, social services in the world.

I'm sure that is my country (USA) taxed petrol even half as much as Norway taxes it, there would be massive amounts of money to help reduce the deficit, and our balance of trade would improve tremendously.

Sadly, the actual report is not online, it costs £5 to buy, which is pretty mad IMHO.

You can find the original press release and list of recommendations, here [ippr.org.uk] though.

I'm a trained biologist, but not *not* an eco-nut. However the variety of scientific evidence coming out lately, combined with the interesting stuff on global dimming [bbc.co.uk] has got me seriously worried. And I mean seriously.

I'm sure you are right and the Earth's biosphere will probably cope, over the space of a few thousand years. However I have a two year old daughter, and I would really rather prefer her to enjoy the fruits of our society, rather than watching N. American and Europe become a dust-bowl over the next 40 years.

Time to actually take this stuff seriously.

Precis on dimming: Global warming effects may have been masked by particulate pollution which appears to have reduced the amount of sunlight getting to the Earth by a massive 30% in some cases).

As I understand it, particulates are in the air because they are produced continuously. Any substantial reduction in particulate production would quickly (1 or 2 years) reduce the quantity in the air, thus reducing the "global dimming".

Particulates are heavier than air, and consequently sink out of the air. The particles that settle on water mostly continue sinking.

I'm a trained biologist, but not *not* an eco-nut. However the variety of scientific evidence coming out lately, combined with the interesting stuff on global dimming has got me seriously worried. And I mean seriously.

I'm sure you are right and the Earth's biosphere will probably cope, over the space of a few thousand years. However I have a two year old daughter, and I would really rather prefer her to enjoy the fruits of our society, rather than watching N. American and Europe become a dust-bowl over

I'd be quite interested to see your reasoning behind that statement. Wouldn't the earth without us just be the earth where we do not exist? Probably a slightly healthier biosphere, even. Wouldn't you mean that we are nothing without the Earth, it seems like it could chug along just fine without us.

I'm not saying down with humans or anything, I just find your statement borderline nonsensical.

How many American families will have to do without their third car, or maybe their second, or even *gasp* use public transportation! And think of the third-worldness of not having a TV in every room. And heaven forbid you can't get Cheez-Its at 3AM.

Most Americans are incredibly spoiled and could cut back consumption by a huge amount without getting even *close* to third world status.

Assuming global warming is a fact, these cutbacks would give the human race a much better chance at surviving without depr

For many people (I would venture to say most of the US), public transportation is not an option. I live in Chicago now, so I can see how many people would not understand that (I didn't even own a car for 3 years, and didn't really miss it), but much of the US is sparsely populated.

Sparsely populated can mean 100-200 miles to nearest store. There is no public transportation available (because there is practically no public!). I have lived in areas where driving to the nearest department store would be e

Apparently we have another person who was asleep in math class when they taught the concept of rate of change. The last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. They're talking about comparable changes in temperature possibly happening over the next 100 years.

I thought we already knew we're too late fixing things up, plus some of the countries that polute the most don't really want to do much about all this anyway. Better rake in the profit before we all perish.
Really, is there anything that can be done?

I was reading National Geographic and they were talking about climate change. One of their opinions was that climate change is already underway. Essentially the switch was flipped some fifty or so years ago.

They also said that climate change happens and that's a fact of life. For example the downfall of the Egyptian empire was partially due to a massive warm spell that caused crops to fail and deserts to form. Ironically the article pointed out that there were no cars at that time.

...climate change happens and that's a fact of life. For example the downfall of the Egyptian empire was partially due to a massive warm spell that caused crops to fail and deserts to form. Ironically the article pointed out that there were no cars at that time.

Biological warfare happens and is a fact of life. The downfall of the Mayan and Incan Empires was partially due to a massive smallpox epidemic deliberately released by Europeans as a deliberate act of war. Ironically, there were no biological weapon

Passive solar doesn't mean much except in temperate areas where little fossil fuel is used today for heating homes.

I suppose you could consider Virginia a temperate climate, but nevertheless the gas bill for my modest house built in the 50s is $120/mo during the winter. Meanwhile they were opening the windows in my sister's passive solar house (about 10 miles away from mine) they day before yesterday (when the temperature was 19 degrees F) because it was 85 inside, without her backup heating sistem running. She expects her gas bill will be a few dollars a month.

You need to stop adding alcohol to fuel to keep farmers producing grain - when the grain production uses more diesel fuel than is saved by the alcohol.

During WWII, many farmers switched to alcohol to fuel their farm equipment, because gasoline was rationed for the war, expensive, and they could produce the alcohol themselves out of the waste products from grain production.

Since alcohol can be made from agricultural waste products of food that is grown to be eaten, there is no reason that it has to be used as a way to subside farmers. That is a political decision, not a technical one.

I agree that changing the way electricity is generated is a good idea, and I'm all for promotion of public transportation.

The idea of moving heavy industry outside of the US doesn't make any sense to me - how would that reduce CO2 production? Will those industries just decide all of a sudden to stop using electricity generated by fossil fuels because they are now in Mexico or China?

a Swedish scientist was warning about global warming in the early 20th century. Nobody did anything then, nothing meaningful is being done now. Nothing meaningful will be done until literally hundreds of millions or billions of people are killed. The world economic system is too narrowly focused in objectives to have people work for the wider good unless all individuals' survival is directly and personally threatened.

Nobody did anything then, nothing meaningful is being done now. Nothing meaningful will be done until literally hundreds of millions or billions of people are killed.

It's called "crying 'wolf'". Where's the urgency? Why should we deal with global warming now when we can deal with it later with better technology, a wealthier society, and a greater understanding of the problem? Poverty kills a lot more people than global warming does and the current proposed solutions to global warming increase poverty. I

What I don't understand about this issue are the arguments against doing something to resolve the problem. They seem to be:
1) We're in a warming cycle/trend and this problem is not our fault.
2) The earth will survive the warming.
3) The problem is not as bad as people say.

Given that the earth is warming, and that this warming will cause catastrophes in excess of anything we've seen, shouldn't we be trying to do something about it? Does it matter if it's caused by us or something else? Does it matter if the problems will arrive in 100 years or 1,000 years?

If we see a clear path to fixing a problem that could save millions of lives, shouldn't we do that?

This whole thing seems like a server admin arguing against doing system backups. Sure, they *might* not be necessary, what what sane person doesn't do them?

Whenever you see an argument made by someone, it's often best to look behind the motivation.

Very few people I know who like to find convenient articles regarding global warming are people with small, efficient cars who also use the trains quite a lot. Basically, they lap up the "global warming is a myth" because they don't want to face the question that their unnecessary SUV may be causing serious damage to the planet.

For goodness sakes people, get out of your cars. If we find that we got global warming wrong, what's the result? Oh, you probably got a bit healthier and maybe met some interesting people on the bus.

Given that the earth is warming, and that this warming will cause catastrophes in excess of anything we've seen, shouldn't we be trying to do something about it?

Well the obvious answer to such a hypothetical situation is "yes", but it's a classic case of begging the question. Your statement of "Given...that this warming will cause catastrophes in excess of anything we've seen" flies in the face of the main point of argument. You're basically saying "let's assume I'm right, so we have to do things MY way, right?" That's hardly an effective debating position.

I think we need a good end of the world situation. I look forward to leading hordes of bad people in the search for pleasure. I plan on wearing a cool mask and driving a highly tuned car o' death while screaming "Give Me Your Oil!!"...but that's just me.

Just thought I'd pipe up -- one [episcopalchurch.org] of your links is being used in a misleading fashion.

That article does not say that global warming caused the earthquake that caused the tsunami. It said that the earthquake (somewhat localized) had effects that touched people's lives very, very far away, and that global warming will touch even more lives.

It sounds like the newspaper writer is making statements far beyond what the report says.

This happens all the time, the journalist misreads (or overinterprets) the report, makes irresponsible claims and statements supposedly based on the report, which inevitably results in the authors of the report being accussed of alarmism by pundits.

Which means the general populace gets bad information all around, and the zealous individuals of the 'right' and 'left' continue to feel they are vindicated in their opinions on global warming and how the 'other side' are ignoring the obvious truth.

1. The G8 and other major economies, including from the developing world, form a G8+ Climate Group, to pursue technology agreements and related initiatives that will lead to large emissions reductions.

2. The G8-Plus Climate Group agree to shift their agricultural subsidies from food crops to biofuels, especially those derived from cellulosic materials, while implementing appropriate safeguards to ensure sustainable farming methods are encouraged, culturally and ecologically sensitive land preserved, and biodiversity protected.

3. G8 governments establish national renewable portfolio standards to generate at least 25% of electricity from renewable energy sources by 2025, with higher targets needed for some G8 governments.

4. G8 governments increase their spending on research, development, and demonstration of advanced technologies for energy-efficiency and low- and zero-carbon energy supply by two-fold or more by 2010, at the same time as adopting strategies for the large-scale deployment of existing low- and zero-carbon technologies.

5. All industrialised countries introduce national mandatory cap-and-trade systems for carbon emissions, and construct them to allow for their future integration into a single global market.

6. A global framework be adopted that builds on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, and enables all countries to be part of concerted action on climate change at the global level in the post-2012 period, on the basis of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities.

7. A long-term objective be established of preventing global average temperature from rising more than 2 C (3.6 F) above the pre-industrial level, to limit the extent and magnitude of climate-change impacts.

8. Governments remove barriers to and increase investment in renewable energy and energy efficient technologies and practices by taking steps including the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies and requiring Export Credit Agencies and MultilateralDevelopment Banks to adopt minimum efficiency or carbon intensity standards for projects they support.

9. Developed countries honour existing commitments to provide greater financial and technical assistance to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change, including the commitments made at the seventh conference of the parties to the UNFCCC in 2001, and pursue the establishment of an international compensation fund to support disaster mitigation and preparedness.

10. Governments committed to action on climate change raise public awareness of the problem and build public support for climate policies by pledging to provide substantial long-term investment in effective climate communication activities.

I live in Halifax, N.S. Canada for 10 years. In the 10 years since I've left, there's been record snowfalls for 3 years... so much I never would have imagined. Also, hurricanes have been striking with increasing devastation whereas the cold water of the Atlantic usually diminished the hurricane significantly.

California and Vancover have been having record rainfalls (each over 600 mm in a week). There's flooding and landslides.

So far, to me, it sounds a bit like freak weather we get every 50 years or so. If this is a sign of what's to come, due to global warming we're in for a rude wake up call.

What's worse: the brunt of the pollution stems from North American and European industrialization. I cannot image what would happen if India or China had a 2 or 3 car family (let alone, the emerging trend of one car as income increases).

With the increase in industrialization of many countries (in part because of consumer culture) and also because of economic expansion and the lower cost of the automobile (namely, in India and China) what can we do to help stop, slow down or perhaps (if possible?) reverse this trend?

Devestation (in the sense that it's talked about and covered in the news) relates to damage to the stuff people build, or to the people sitting inside that stuff when it falls down. The biggest factor in hurrican damage for the last 100 years has been the increasing number of expensive things that we've stupidly put on the coasts that are periodically hit, and always have been.

What's worse: the brunt of the pollution stems from North American and European industrialization. I cannot image what would happen if India or China had a 2 or 3 car family (let alone, the emerging trend of one car as income increases).

Are you aware of what China looks like NOW? There's a near-permanent haze over most of eastern China [nasa.gov]. I was there in October, and even on a "sunny" day, we couldn't see the sun. Most mornings in Hong Kong, we could barely see across the Bund, and even at mid-day, good luc

I thought slashdotters were intelligent. Every post here is saying global warming is a sham. If you actually spend some time looking you will find out that global warming doesn't just mean it gets hot. It means everything goes hay wire. Most likely is that we will have hotter summers and colder winters. Weather will be extreme. More tornados, more hurricanes, more droughts and more floods.

Anyone who is aware of the situation knows that there is a definite environmental crisis looming. This isn't just about global warming and resource depletion, but about eliminating our forests and converting nature into a wasteland. The side effects already affect your day to day life: more health problems, environmental pollutants, decreased quality of and less diversity of food, climate uncertainty.

But for us to sit here and say "nothing will change" and turn a blind eye is just plain stupid. If you're older, than... keep your mouth shut (thanks for the mess, btw). If you're younger, you have a responsibility to not contribute toward a spiralling problem because. What do you do?

BUY LESS STUFF and don't throw out so much trash (help decrease the resource consumption cycle)

Demand resource and energy efficient alternatives

Tell your politicians that you care about environmental issues such as air, water quality, waste responsibility

Steer clear of, and tell others to stay away from practices you know to be harmful

If you are fearing that such practices will destroy the US economy, don't worry -- the economy is on its way to collapse under the weight of decades of corporate scandals and greed. You are NOT going to destroy the economy by cutting down consumption. Nor are you going to save the economy by purchasing new cars or computers.

Do what you know is right. And if you're religious at all, take pride in the fact that you will not be eternally marked with the sin of helping destroy the lives of your fellow humans.

Sadly I haven't the time to read this story at 1 or 2 to read this week's climate change trolls. Could I therefore just request that anyone about to opst about Michael Crichton, the 'new ice age we were warned about in the 1970s', farting cows, fluctuations in the sun's output, or anything else that attempts to deny the basic scientific consensus on climate change that they please go and read the relevant RealClimate.org articles [realclimate.org] firston their current misapprehension first, then include a reasoned explanation of how the scientists have all got it wrong. (Explanations based on the assumption of a world-wide scientific conspiracy will be moderated down to -1... I hope.)

The current administration in the white house have religious ideologies that fall in line with apocalypse being nigh. They believe that when catastrophe hits, the elect, or chosen, (by God) will be greeted by Jesus from the heavons and provided a new earth, provided Isreal is status quo upon the arival of this doomsday. This is my own belief as to why the administration is living like there is no tomorrow. Even though the pentagon has been doing studies on how global warming and climate change might be the worst security threat we have ever faced, the administration is encouraging business as usual, why? The first President Bush said the American way of life is not negotiable.

Here is the cold hard truth - we Americans are living in the 29th day of a lifestyle that is not sustainable, and it will end soon, very soon. The world, as well as basic geology and the second law of thermodynamics is begining to tell us we can't keep living this way. Our consumer driven lives do come at a cost, in economic terms the hidden costs of our lifestyles are called "externalities". These externalities include massive degradation to the environment. 25% of the coral reefs in the world are dead. Most fish is unsafe to eat now because of heavy metal content. Our fisheries are dying out. Rainforrests are becoming a thing of the past.

For those of you who live down in the desert what happens to Las Vegas when the Colordo river stops turning the turbines in the Hoover dam - the flow rate was down 70% below average last year and we have had 2 wet decades and are now entering into a dry era.

The average American meal travels 1300 miles fueled by hydrocarbon energy before we eat it. Every calorie of food we eat requires 10 calories of hydrocarbon energy input to produce it, not including packaging and transportation. All of our fertilizers and pesticides are derrived from oil and natural gas. 90% of an Iowa farmer's costs are directly and indirectly related to the cost of fuel. Every pound of beef produced uses 2500 gallons of water and 16 pounds of grain. Talk about unsustainable. What happens when the fuel runs out? We will we have a couple options, scale back usage, or go to war to procure the remaining scraps of what is left. Our administration chose plan B. Going to war for something that should be left in the ground in the first place.

Right now is a very precarious time in American history and I think war is the last thing we should be pursuing, why? We are is massive massive debt. The trade deficit is gargantuan. Our dollar is financed to the hilt, and it's on the virge of collapse. Petrodollars as they call them now in economics are relying heavily on China buying our t-bonds, the corrupt world bank loaning money to third world nations which will never be able to pay them off (forcing them into credit card debt if you will), and the oil trade being financed in the dollar instead of the euro. That was in fact one of the hidden agendas of the war in Iraq, to get Iraq's oil trade switched back into dollars (it took about one week after the invasion to get that done) because Saddam had changed it over to euros and we weren't going to take it. But, the world is starting to consider switching anyway. We have 800 military bases around the world, fighting multiple front wars, buying, spending, consuming, pillaging, like there is no tomorrow. It's called imperial overstretch, it's why the Rome and the Soviet Union collapsed. If we don't stop imperial overstretch, there will be no tomorrow.

By the way, did you realize that Saudi Arabia -the most intolerant regime on the face of the earth- has 7 trillion in our stock market? The lead the wold in beheadings you know. 15 out of 19 of the hi-jackers who did 9/11 were from, you guessed it, Saudi Arabia.

Additionally the housing bubble is poised to collapse. Houses are WAY WAY WAY overvalued. I hope you didn't just buy a house. And the production of Oil and natural gas is going to start into a permanent decline when both of those peak, as soon as now - 2007.

I wonder how many of you people that are joking abut this shit have kids, and if so, do you care about them? Because to me it doesn't sound like it to me. When gas goes up to $7.00 a gallon I don't think you will be laughing as hard. We are are struggling to feed your kids I don't think you will be laughing as hard, then.

You mean like gas is now in the UK? Alright, when I was there last month at the then-current exchange rate, it was $6.25 a gallon, not $7.00 a gallon, but, close enough.

There is always some type of disaster that is "going" to happen. It's all propoganda just to keep everyone frightened into doing whatever it is the flavor of the month wants you to do. Here's an idea, let's just live.. because when the time comes to die, you will.

And that was mod'ed "Insightful"?

This isn't about you or your death.

This is about leaving the planet in a habitable condition for the next generation.

Or do you also suck on loaded revolvers because "when that time comes.. big deal.. death is the completion of life in whatever form it may take"?

There are lots of small things we can all do right now. Going to a shop a mile away? Walk instead of starting up the car. Next car, get something more efficient. Take a train on a long journey. Don't do journeys you really don't need to. Work from home instead of commuting. Car share. Cut back your lifestyle. Buy stuff produced locally (like food and beer) and cut down on people transporting it. Get your house insulated. Turn off your monitors/TVs when you aren't using them.

I'm no saint. I don't do all these things, but there's some food for thought there.

Sorry for the excessive quotations marks, but I just feel like there's some simplistic thinking going on about the ability of human beings to react en masse like this.

If a scientific consensus exists that certain human activities (industry and commerce, mostly) are affecting the environment in ways that will eventually harm us, that's still a long way from doing anything about it. Reversing industrial and economic trends costs money--mostly opportunity costs from having to cease certain profitable, but polluting/warming endeavors. It's not always possible to set up a system in which those costs are rationalized to the people who can deal with them.

A lot of it comes down to what "we" means, in this context: you have to get a politically enabled consensus on the existence of the problem, AND on the view that the harms of environmental damage outweigh the economic costs of changing how we do things. In the US, right now, I don't see either of those realizations taking root enough to affect policy substantially. Even if the science and economic analyses are sound, there's still going to be a long, drawn-out debate over the merits.

But is this really so bad? We're deliberative, not knee-jerking. I've been convinced lately that the scientific evidence in favor of human climate influence is pretty strong, but it's still an enormously complex question.

And remember, getting the answer wrong will be just as harmful to the human race if we go overboard on trying to prevent climate change: all those opportunity costs, whoever pays them, will be felt collectively as a lower standard of living.

Basically, I just think you're being unfair by labelling humanity "stupid, paranoid, ignorant, and arrogant" (not to mention suggesting that we should go extinct!). This is an incredibly difficult question to get right, and the consequences EITHER way are pretty nasty if the human race gets it wrong.

If you define "we" to include more than "Texas" (hard to do, I know, just take a deep breath and face the fact that Yessirreebob, there's folks livin' beyond them thar hills), then yes, "we" did have record highs last year. In N-W Europe, 2004 was one of the warmest years in a century. Not only that, in 1994-2004 8 out of 10 years were warmer than usual.And the earth may have a climatic cycle of its own, but this time we're helping it along. You can debate the extent of our influence, but just assuming that extent is 0% and adopting an "Après moi la déluge" attitude is Just Plain Dumb.

Well, I consider myself a radical moderate (because moderates are so rare - we must be the radicals now). The article you cite is as bad as the one in the article summary but from the other perspective. For example:

While some in the U.S. have offered sharp criticism of the ideology driving the global warming crusade, none of the rhetoric has been as penetrating as Illarionov's, who compared it "with man-hating totalitarian ideology with which we had the bad fortune to deal during the 20th century, such as National Socialism (and) Marxism."

The slam against the global warming crowd by comparing them to militant feminists is just plain silly. But by the same token (from the summary article), there's just as much silliness on the other side:

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world...

As if politicians and business leaders have the expertise to make this pronouncement? Right. I'd be interested in what the acedemics have to say (and interested in their qualifications), but the rest of the group? They're just along for the ride. And although the article makes a statement that 400ppm for CO2 is a critical point - it never explains what evidence supports this number. Now, the report may be correct, but when a news article reports only the conclusions and none of the methods, it is just so much fear mongering. Just as the opposing side is so much head-burying. As someone else said, the original results would be much more interesting.

...gonna run all this on solar and wind power... or something like it.

You're gonna have to sometime, the oil will not last forever. And without oil, no electricity, little economy and yep, grass huts and beans. Spend your children's inheritance, so long as you had fun in your Hummer, right?

Global warming means that the global temperature will rise. It doesn't mean that all areas will suffer/benefit from higher temperatures. It means we can expect a shake-up in global weather patterns as the world heats up. This could mean that the Gulf Stream moves and London becomes as cold as Moscow; or that el-nino is dissrupted occurning more or less frequently than ussual; or that Texas gets snow, or Israel gets a plague of locusts.

The point is that our actions are causing changes, over and above the normal warming we'd expect to see due to normal ebb and flow of ice ages. Just because the phenemenon is called Global Warming doesn't mean that the effects to all will be a warmer domicile. To Floridians it might mean more hurricanes, and to Texans more of that snow stuff.

It doesn't mean any of them will occur. The fact of the matter is, all the computer models in the World and wildassed guesses mean that we know very little about how the planet

Don't confuse knowing very little with knowing nothing at all. Take a pot of water and put it on the stove. Turn on the burner. You know that the water will get warm and eventually boil. Scientists could make some measurements and tell you pretty much exactly when it will boil, and how quickly it will boil dry. But no computer program in the world can accurately tell you exactly what the pattern of bubbles will be during the boiling. So what? It just means that there are some things we can't model/predict, like boiling or weather, and there are some we can, like climate and thermodynamics.

We do know that our actions are causing changes, and we know that further actions will cause further changes - within a range of uncertainty.
This won't change just because you want to continue to pollute.

This of course ignores the whole fact that no one agrees that we've actually "turned the burner on" as far as Earth is concerned.

We have. It's indisputable that we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, and that CO2 levels are rising. It's also beyond dispute that CO2 absorbs IR radiation, and that such absorption will act to warm the surface. That means to me that "we've turned on the burner". People argue about negative feedback that might counteract the warming effect - but that's not the "burner".

Large volcanos like Mt.St. Helens barf more particulates and greenhouse gas into the atmosphere in a single eruption than all the human activity since 1900.

No, that's wrong. Volcanoes on average put in 100-200 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Humans dump about 6 BILLION tons each year. Here is a reference [fs.fed.us]. here is another [csiro.au]

Well, Sherlock, we have some pretty good evidence for it. As I keep having to repeat: we know we are releasing CO2, we know that CO2 is staying in the atmosphere, and we know that CO2 absorbs IR radiation. We also know a bunch of other facts about the physics of radiative transfer, thermodynamics, fluuid flow etc etc. We know that when we combine those facts in a computer model that that model shows warming (on average). Finally, we know that it is ge

Boiling a pot of watter has been repeated. I have not seen anyone show me that in that past CO2 levels have gone up and temperature went up with it.

Check out: this link [worldviewo...arming.org]. Scroll down to the plot of CO2 vs temperature and then tell me there isn't a correlation. Now recall that CO2 levels are at 370 ppm and rising... Before you run off an put the cart before the horse (that warming causes CO2), know that we have good, sound physical reasons to expect CO2 rises to cause warming, but few reasons to expect the

The fact of the matter is, all the computer models in the World and wildassed guesses mean that we know very little about how the planet, and solar system for that matter, are warming and what the ultimate side effects of that warming are.

Ding ding!! Troll!!

Computer models are not, in fact, wildassed guesses. If you know otherwise, please explain. I'm sure the world's climate modellers would love to know what you're basing that assertion on... unless it's a wild-assed guess, of course? Just a hunch.

You know, the 40 years that you have spent on this planet won't even register as a blip in the entire history of this planet.

Just because it didn't happen yesterday doesn't mean we cannot observe real change.

True, the current warming (I am in Edmonton and have +5 today?) could just be a blip (because of the large timeframe changes take on the planet) but it could also be a sign of things really getting screwed.

As another poster pointed out: The planet will survive, we may not, at least not as cushy as it

I am getting so tired of this junk science. The world has been coming to an end for my entire 40+ years on this planet. Nothing has happened yet. Ain't going to happen either.

Maybe the world has been coming to an end, just slower than your average Hollywoood movie would have you think it will. Climate change really has happened, and you can talk to plenty of old people living in places like Alaska and they will usually tell you that it used to be colder. There is ample evidence for glacier retreat and ic

Why has it better getting progressively colder over the past 20 years in places like Russia and China?

Because, like many others, you are equating Global Warming to mean a literal rise in temperature across the globe. While Global Warming would indeed cause temperature rises, you need to take the step and think about what warming means to a substance being heated at a molecular level. Think about what happens to a pan of water as it is brought to boiling point and the increasingly extreme motion instill

I didn't learn that this was all junk science from oil industry propaganda. I saw this on the O'Reilly Factor and it had SCIENTISTS and EXPERTS on it saying that this was all bunk.

And we all know that scientists and experts all live of thin air and don't need to eat. How do you know they were scientists and experts did you programme makers say so? That isn't proof, I watch Enterprise and get told we can travel faster than light it doesn't mean I should believe it. How do you know that the programme maker

Heh. here [slashdot.org] is a post I made shortly prior to my response.

I'm well aware of the various implications. I just don't think it's as bleak as everyone makes out to be. Sure, there might be killing, chaos, and a fairly abrupt end to our current way of life (IMO, things will simply reach critical mass and go reactor critical). The dollar losing value will likely have a large impact as well. There'll be a fair amount of cultural residue for a good while after US decline hits critical, I think, but we can likely exp

This isn't crying wolf. This is reminding people, YOU ARE SERIOUSLY FUCKED if you don't change your behaviours, and influence behaviour changes in others. This is part of what we call warnings -- you know, preventing disasters, or at least mitigating their extent, before the shit hits the fan.

This is kind of like me telling you, hey, that US economy doesn't look too hot... maybe you shouldn't be investing your life savings in it right now. Am I crying